I have been going over my options for car audio, and i think i might go the route of a large size USB (64 gig) and put my music files and playlists onto that instead of using my iphone or ipod (16 gig), plus, i won't need to fiddle with a y cable.

I only have a 16 gig iphone and it can't hold my library. Anyone think the flash drive is a good idea?

I personally prefer the iPod for it's user friendliness. It's "easier" to handle playlists, organize music, and transfer files ifyou already use itunes.
Plus, if you're anal about play counts like me, it also keeps stores and updates that sort of information.

Don't know about max size but I will say that my 250GB mini external drive (non-flash) was not recognized. I use a 32GB flash drive. I have to say that if you aren't good at organizing your music by folders then the interface is poor. It lets you browse the folder structure which is great for me but if you want to use the tag search it doesn't display albums correctly. some albums of mine sort alphabetically instead of by track # when using the search album function. I live and die by folder structure anyway as I store my mp3s on a file server so it's a non-issue for me.

You have to take in to account the file transfer time as well. I get about 10GB/hour at best but the great thing is that if your transfer doesn't complete all you have to do is reinitiate it the next time you drive and the bimmer will pick up where it left off.

With the ipod interface I also found the search function to be cumbersome and not user friendly especially while driving. Best is to live and die by playlists. I found an itunes script which auto creates playlists by tag. So for example I just set it to create a playlist for every album in my library.

My 80gb iPod is close to full and I will almost certainly use it as my music source in the car (with or without a Y cable as needed!?).

However, I am intrigued by the possibility of using a flash drive. My novice concerns are that:

1. Album/playlist track orders are not correct.
2. I don't know how to tag tracks as also being in a separate playlist (I'm fairly sure you can't and that instead you would have to save repeated copies of tracks in their respective album and playlist folders).
3. I have no idea how to get the album artwork out of iTunes and tagged to the tracks on my flash drive.

I'd still like to keep my options open though, so if anyone can direct me to a helpful guide or resource on the best way to go about this, I'd be really grateful.

From what I remember, and this is stated in the manual, it is more of a "number of files" limit. And at the same place they write that hard drives don't work, only USB sticks. Probably a question of power consumtion.

From what I remember, and this is stated in the manual, it is more of a "number of files" limit. And at the same place they write that hard drives don't work, only USB sticks. Probably a question of power consumtion.

The manual says that up to four USB sticks can be used to store a maximum of either 16,000 or 32,000 tracks. Don't know why there is a difference between the two. No mention of maximum GB size, I use only an 8GB stick and works like a dream. Has to be formatted to FAT32 though and not NTFS.

As for the tags I use a free piece of software called MP3tag to update them with artist, album name etc if that has not pulled through, particularly if I have copied the music from a CD. All other tracks were originally downloaded from iTunes and then copies across to the USB stick.

As for creating playlists that is a bit tricky, but can be done in Windows Media Player and then copying to the USB stick.